The Austro-Hungarian
composer Karl Goldmark, possibly known
today only for occasional performances
of his Rustic Wedding symphony
and violin concerto, had the Viennese-based
violinist Joseph Hellmesberger in mind
when he wrote his string quartet Op.
8. Hellmesberger initially rejected
it as ‘short-winded in its themes’.
This must have come as a great disappointment
to this entirely self-educated man.
As one of a family of 21 children, of
which only 12 survived, Goldmark learned
the basics of music and violin playing
from a chorister in his village on the
Austro-Hungarian border before moving
to the capital to live with an older
brother and take lessons from a member
of the Imperial orchestra. ‘I composed
merrily without the slightest knowledge
about harmony let alone counterpoint.
... I had no inkling of the existence
of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven’. This
was rectified in 1847 when he studied
with Böhm before the 1848 revolutions
in Europe forced the Conservatoire to
shut down. After years of teaching,
theatre playing, and arranging, Goldmark
organised a concert of his own works
in 1858 and, when it flopped, he did
so again just over a year later. It
was at this second event in 1860 that
this, his only string quartet scored
such a great success that it converted
Hellmesberger to Goldmark’s cause. Its
structure is entirely classical, with
much of that by now mastered counterpoint
in the finale, but presumably because
the virtuoso Hellmesberger was its dedicatee,
it also makes more demands upon the
first violin than his three colleagues.
That should read ‘her’ because the Klenke
Quartet is all-female. They give it
a stylish performance, in particular
a fizzing scherzo with a beautifully
controlled ending, and make a convincing
case for hearing the work more often.
By the way, the booklet translation
from German to English falls into the
trap of describing the key of the work
as B rather than B flat; for that the
original would have had to have been
H; but then Grove 6 (1980) gets it wrong
too, for in that worthy tome it appears
in D.
Goldmark’s operas (the
‘best known’ being The Queen of Sheba
or The Cricket on the Hearth)
were sucked into the wake of the great
Wagnerian ship then sailing the world’s
seas, whilst his chamber music followed
strictly the line of Mendelssohn. It
makes a felicitous coupling therefore
to record the two composers on this
disc. The latter is represented by his
1827 A minor quartet, written a year
after the incidental music to A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. It too had a violinist
to champion it, this time Ferdinand
David, dedicatee of the violin concerto.
Mendelssohn, unlike Goldmark, was both
popular and successful, and also had
the cushion of coming from a rich family.
This quartet has a dotted-rhythm motif
running through it and taken from an
earlier love song Op.9 No.1. The words
to the motif in its original setting
form the question ‘Ist es wahr?’ (‘Is
it true?’). The music is passionate
in the first two movements, the scherzo
has the song theme accompanied by pizzicato
textures, while the finale is dramatic
to the end. The Klenke Quartet (formed
in 1994 at Weimar) give a wonderfully
poised account, intelligently phrased,
intensely expressive in the more fired-up
moments - in particular the recitativo
style which appear at various points
in the finale - while brilliant and
light as a feather in the scherzo. In
particular listen out for reminiscences
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at 2.00 and 5.00 on track 8.
This fine disc is the
fourth in the Klenke’s discography,
the other three being Mozart’s Quartets
K.378/421, Haydn Op.77 No.2/Webern Six
Bagatelles Op.9/Debussy String Quartet
Op.10, and Mozart Quartet K.156/Shostakovich’s
seventh/Tchaikovsky Op. 11. This string
quartet, which I commend highly, does
not seem to have performed in the UK,
something which should be remedied as
soon as possible.
Christopher Fifield
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Klenke Quartet (Annegret Klenke: violin;
Beate Hartmann: violin; Yvonne Uhlemann: viola;
Ruth Kaltenhäuser: cello)